Some of Lansdale Catholic High School’s most recent graduates are planting seeds of hope within people in need who are 1,480 miles away from Philadelphia. God is also using those experiences to plant seeds of lifelong compassion and service in those same young people.
The young alumni and faculty of LCHS are engaging in mission trips through Mustard Seed, a ministry of compassion living beside and helping adults and children with disabilities in the economically challenged non-tourist areas of Montego Bay, Jamaica.
“It’s just about presence and it’s love through presence,” LCHS math teacher Jennifer Cooney said about the seven trips LCHS has organized to Jamaica since 2018. The most recent trip took place July 18 to 25 with 14 young alumni and three teachers.
“When you really dive into what Christ wants for us, it’s love through presence.
The 17 pilgrims traveled the bumpy, sometimes one-lane, jungle-filled 45-minute journey from the Montego Bay airport past half-built houses to serve at Mustard Seed’s Blessed Assurance home for 35 youths and adults who bubble up with anticipation of a week making new friends and seeing old ones from Philadelphia.
“Once you get there and you go over that little bridge, it’s like its own little world,” said Demi Schlotter, a 2002 LCHS graduate who received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Delaware. She has journeyed to Blessed Assurance three times.
“As soon as you go through those gates, it’s just completely soul changing. All the residents there are so excited to see you. As soon as the bus doors open, you’re just greeted with probably the most amount of love that a human could possibly take in at one time.”
Schlotter said that the week fills each participant with encounters of love that are different with each individual, because each resident communicates uniquely through words or actions.
“Some of them love to talk. Others can’t talk at all, and they show their love by holding your hand or by just taking you around the property,” she said.
“Some of them love to sing, love to dance, and love to listen to music. The smile that comes across their face when they hear something so simple is so beautiful.”
Isabella Sirianni, a sophomore at Franciscan University at Steubenville, took her first chance this July to experience Mustard Seed through the LCHS young alumni mission trip program.
She said she saw the Lord’s hand throughout the entire week, particularly through the gift of presence.
“Especially with the residents who are nonverbal, presence is sometimes all you can give them. When (I) met their gaze, it was impossible for me to have any other thought in my mind because it was just so encapsulating and so beautiful. When they smiled, it was just the most rewarding feeling in the world,” Sirianni said.
“That to me was the face of Christ. They were being so present to me and they weren’t asking anything of me. They were just asking me to be myself with them and just give my presence in return.”
That presence was woven into the daily life of helping residents eat breakfast and receive medicine, play sports and enjoy music, share lunch and personal care, relaxation, dinner and Mass or eucharistic adoration.
Seven days of that routine allowed experienced alumni like Schlotter time to see the journey some residents are making, particularly Gabriel, a wheelchair-bound resident whom she has become close to over the years.
“The second day that we were there, we walked into the gazebo in the morning and he was up and walking, pulling himself up on the side of this little wall that they have,” she said. “I was just in pure shock because I never thought that he was even working on walking, let alone doing it by himself with no assistance.”
These experiences of seeing God’s face in the residents at Blessed Assurance strikes Daniel Finocchio in the heart, leading him to live differently after co-leading and coordinating these mission journeys with Cooney.
“We look at them sometimes like they’re poor or whatnot, but they’re rich in what matters,” he said. “Sometimes our culture is poor. We have the material things, but we don’t have the spiritual things that they have.”
That spiritual insight was not lost on Sirianni, as she cherished her experience in the community and “the gift of the present moment, just acknowledging that the Lord works in the present,” she said.
“There’s such a desire to give, and to give in such a beautiful way.”
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